2024/03/06 by Jon L. Pitt · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Archaeology and Natural History #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Religious Tourism and Spaces
paper · pdf · doi:10.1163/9789004683310_011
openalex publication_date 2024/03/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/01/22
Lake Akan, located on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, is home to world famous algae: spherical-shaped growths of Aegagropila linnaei known in Japanese as marimo (and sometimes called “moss balls” in English). Marimo have become a charismatic species internationally, a rare feat for an alga. Lake Akan hosts an annual three-day Marimo Festival, which began in 1950 as a way of drawing attention to the endangered species and as a means of celebrating the culture of the Indigenous Ainu community in the wake of settler colonialism. A key element to marimo’s popularization is a widely-circulated story – a purported Ainu folktale that tells of two young, star-crossed lovers who jump into Lake Akan and become marimo. This tale has been used for decades to promote tourism to the Lake Akan area. However, in 2017, algae researcher Wakana Isamu traced the origins of the tale back to a Japanese writer named Nagata Kōsaku, who invented the tale and falsely claimed its Ainu origins in 1924. This chapter asks what it means for this tale of imagined indigeneity to have been embraced and reclaimed by the Ainu community of Kushiro in the name of conservation twice-over – that of rare algae and Ainu identity itself.